Saturday, September 4, 2010

An Announcement

I have some good news and I have some bad news.

The good news: I’ve been doing a little research on CouchSurfing. (This is not yet the good news. My life
has not yet gotten to the point that accomplishing a single internet related task without getting distracted by pictures of
penguins is “good news.”)
For instance I read this LA
Times
article
from 2004 which outlines the basics of the movement:

Couch surfing is not, as the name may suggest, loading the divan in the back of the woody and hanging 10 from it at Zuma Beach. CouchSurfing is actually a global online network of travelers who have offered or are seeking couches on which to sleep. For free.

James Gilden, Special to The Times? More like James Gilden, Special Comedian to The Times!
James Gilden, Hip Jokester to The Times. James Gilden, Guy Who Clearly Knows A Lot
About Surfing to The Times.

I do not know what the phrase “back of the woody” means, but
wikipeda says that woody can be a nickname for someone
named Woodrow or Woodard. It probably does not refer to either of those things, in the first
case because I just don’t think James Gilden is talking about throwing a sofa at a man called Woodrow; and in the
second case because I do not believe that Woodard is a real name. If I worked at a Jamba
Juice and a customer said their name was Woodard, I would think that they were attempting to
joke, and I would tell them to leave and never come back. By the way this is also how I feel
about the name Rudyard, which I cannot say without it sounding like indigestion.

The last entry on the disambiguation page is “Woodie a 1930’s to early 1950’s vintage
station wagon with exterior wood paneling and trim.” Despite the spelling difference and lack of
punctuation expressing the relationship between Woodie and the noun phrase that follows it,
this seems like the most plausible option. Having not been alive in any of the listed
decades, this reference is still lost on me, though clearly not on James Gilden, who, as
we’ve established, clearly knows a lot about surfing. Hang 10!

(But CouchSurfing, it’s not that. It’s this website where you can sign up to host world
travelers in your home. If you think this sounds dangerous, do not worry: according to
Wikipedia only one CouchSurfer has been raped.)

The good news is that there is a CouchSurfing couch right here in Guangzhou, China! Very
close to our apartment actually. So if you ever come to Guangzhou, there’s a great place for
you to stay.

The bad news is that that place belongs to Gristle.

Gristle, in other words, is very happy to load your divan in the bad of his woody.
He already had a guy come stay with him, an American, who
Gristle said was strange and elderly. He stayed with Gristle, in Gristle’s
one room apartment, for a week.

Gristle says that he’s really excited about going to stay with people all over China and,
eventually, the world. If someone from Guangzhou contacts you on CouchSurfing and asks if he
can stay with you, you should absolutely say yes. What’s the worst that can happen?

That he takes your iron and ironing board, asks you to help him carry bottles of cooking oil
across the city, tells you to buy him $70 worth of American ginseng, asks you to help him
buy real estate in the Midwest, makes you take pictures of him in the shower, tries to get
you to teach him how to juggle, play the ukulele, speak German, brings you presents for your
birthday, invites you to his relatives’ houses for his birthday, the worst
and best that can happen is that you become friends with Gristle — the man who started at
all, that Guangzhou man about town, the man of my dreams, ah: Gristle. Gristle.